Family, music and queerness: Exploring the worlds of ‘This Is the Only Kingdom’
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Jaquira Díaz’s debut novel, “This Is the Only Kingdom,” is one of Time magazine’s most anticipated books of the year. Born in Puerto Rico and raised between Humacao, Fajardo and Miami Beach, Díaz is the author of “Ordinary Girls: A Memoir,” winner of multiple awards and honors, including a Whiting Award and a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal. A two-time Pushcart Prize recipient, she has held prestigious fellowships, published widely in major outlets and now lives in New York, where she teaches at Columbia University.
“This Is the Only Kingdom” is an epic portrait of a mother and daughter wrestling with grief, love and identity. The novel is set against the backdrop of a working-class barrio [neighborhood or district, often referring to local, community-defined area within a town or city] in Puerto Rico known as El Caserío. Through Díaz’s storytelling, the community pulses with music, violence, joy and queerness, creating a world that feels both intensely specific and universally human.
At its heart, the decade-spanning novel tells the story of Maricarmen, a young girl and the mother of Nena, as they navigate mourning the murder of someone in their beloved community. “It was so important to me to write a book that was not just about death and desperation. I wanted to write something that had some kind of redemption and joy in the end,” Díaz explains.
Interwoven with grief and violence is the vibrant pulse of music. Díaz, who grew up surrounded by her father’s salsa records, structures the novel like an album. “The first thing that occurred to me was that I needed to maybe use music as a theme,” she says. Each chapter corresponds to a song — from Ismael Rivera’s “Las Caras Lindas,” celebrating Blackness, to Cheo Feliciano’s “El Raton,” capturing slow, intimate moments of falling in love. “I wanted the themes and the tone kind of to match, because that song is kind of slow, you kind of feel like they’re slowly falling in love.” From blaring horns to the rhythm of spoken Spanglish, the narrative flows like a living, breathing salsa record, blending political commentary, love and storytelling.
Díaz’s father influenced some of the stories she tells in the novel, and when asked about what parts of the novel are based on real events, she mentions, “I am always writing about real people.” Her characters are often inspired by five or more people she knows. “I’m so hesitant to create fictional characters, because real people I know are so interesting. That’s kind of what you do as a fiction writer. You steal a little bit from real life.”
(photo by Sylvie Rosokoff)
The novel also tackles queerness. Nena and Tito, two queer characters, navigate a community that is simultaneously accepting and hostile. Díaz reflects on her own upbringing. “I had to contend with showing how a community can be so open and loving and supportive; the moment that they find out Tito is gay, they’re no longer supportive. They’re like, no, we don’t accept people.” Through these characters, Díaz explores the tensions between family, community and self, illustrating how queer identities are negotiated in complex cultural landscapes.
Race and colorism are central to the story as well. Maricarmen, a white girl, is raising Black children in El Caserío, exposing the subtle and overt ways race shapes identity and belonging. Díaz points out how “even the most well-meaning people still have not done the work. Even [Maricarmen], who is a mother and who loves these children, still has not done the work. She thinks she’s doing enough by loving them and she’s not. It’s not enough.”
The novel moves between Puerto Rico and Miami, between 1980s barrios and 1990s urban realities, capturing the rhythm of everyday life, the trauma of loss and the triumph of found family. At its core, it is a love letter to mothers and daughters, to the barrios, to the music that shapes lives, and to the queer and Black bodies that move through them.
“This Is the Only Kingdom” is more than a story of survival in El Caserío. It’s a story about memory, imagination and how a place shapes the lives of those who live in it. Music weaves through the streets, queerness moves at the story’s core and grief carries along the characters’ journeys. In “This Is the Only Kingdom,” the rhythms and voices of the barrio linger with you long after the final page.
“This Is the Only Kingdom” will be available everywhere on October 21, 2025, and is available for preorder.
Jaquira Díaz will be in conversation with Lupita Aquino for her series “La Comunidad Reads” in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. You can RSVP online.
— Story by Ofelia Montelongo
— Copy edited by Kami Waller
Ofelia Montelongo is a bilingual writer from Mexico with an MBA in strategic leadership and an M.A. in Latin American literature. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Latino Book Review, Los Acentos Review and elsewhere, and she was the editor of the “Latine Monsters” issue at Barrelhouse. Montelongo currently teaches as a writer in residence for PEN/Faulkner, a Macondista and a PEN America Emerging Voices fellow. She is also a Tin House, VONA and Key West Seminar alumna.
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